


Headcanon! Hell! Now!

by bramblePatch



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Archived from Bramblepatch Blog, Headcanon, Meta Essay, Meta Snippets, Nonfiction, TAZ: Balance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 20:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16878651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bramblePatch/pseuds/bramblePatch
Summary: Several short bits of meta from my tumblr, all of which involve Lup, most of which involve Taako, and most of which caused people to yell at me.





	Headcanon! Hell! Now!

Taako and Lup were canonically passed around from family member to family member as kids and struck out on their own fairly young, taking odd jobs with traveling caravans or running confidence scams and spending most of their time on the road.

Which makes it super fucking impressive that they’re both really accomplished and powerful wizards? You can’t become a wizard by _accident_. You can spontaneously manifest sorcery, and you can certainly be tricked, manipulated, or forced into a warlock’s pact you didn’t intend to make, but you really can’t just accidentally start doing wizardry. Wizardry is magic gained through intense study. The twins must have fought tooth and nail for every scrap of magic they learned. Finding wizards who would give them a few lessons before they moved on, comparing notes and checking each other’s work, buying begging or stealing spellbooks to painstakingly decipher.

Taako keeps careful track of what material components they both need for their spellwork, learns what they need to get, and what he can transmute from something else, and where they can make substitutions.

Lup  _always_  checks Taako’s math for him.

Later, when he’s on his own, Taako doesn’t understand why it’s so hard for him to learn new spells. Everything takes longer than he thinks it should. He forgets to carry the one and the whole page of notes is useless.

Probably it’s just that he’s an idiot, Taako figures

* * *

 

Concept: the time limit on the planar travel belts isn’t a functional requirement in any way - Lup could easily have given them an open-ended time frame for the heist.

It’s just that she recognizes now that potentially having to quit the mission, regroup, and try again later is  _by far_  preferable to running the risk of not coming back at all.

* * *

There’s a tension between “people change” and “you’ve internalized some unhealthy shit” and  _part_  of the issue, ultimately, has to be that in trying to find the balance of where  _Taako_  falls on that issue, Lup ends up willfully ignoring her own damage.

While in the umbrella, Lup  _had to_  strenuously  _resist_  changing to a degree that would have been maladaptive - if not totally impossible - in any circumstances other than near-total isolation and sensory deprivation. That’s a thing Lup is probably better equipped for than anyone who  _hasn’t_  intentionally built emotional reinforcements into her own soul in anticipation of needing to maintain her sense of self as a lich, but still. She was in a very difficult holding pattern for those ten years and once the adrenaline of saving the world wears off she’s going to have to figure out how that self she so carefully preserved interacts with a family that have all changed so  _drastically_  in her absence. 

Like? Taako has very real unhealthy development from his decade without her. He’s changed and in a lot of ways it’s not for the better and it’s going to take a long time for him to recover if he ever can. Lup’s identity is as tied up in “being Taako’s sister” as Taako’s is in “being Lup’s brother,” and while she didn’t have to deal with totally losing that aspect of herself for a decade, she does now need to abruptly recalibrate how she responds to Taako’s needs, because those needs have changed more than she has. And I think it’d be really easy for her to rationalize just… not talking about that, because knowing how difficult she finds switching gears like that would only make Taako feel worse.

* * *

It takes Taako approximately two days to start designing his outfits around the umbrastaff, because honestly, it’s not just an arcane focus, it’s an accessory and he’s got an image to maintain. It’s not quite his usual aesthetic, but he makes it work.

This absolutely kills Lucretia, because of course in the process he unwittingly keeps recreating choice Lup Looks.


End file.
